Blogger Patterico on being SWAT-ed over politics

Last year, after posting numerous items about Rep. Anthony Weiner and his Twitter photos scandal, Los Angeles conservative blogger Patrick Frey heard a late-night knock on his door in Rancho Palos Verdes. It was sheriff's deputies, guns pulled and hackles up, demanding he come out with his hands in the air. Frey was cuffed and put in a squad car, his wife frisked, and their kids wakened. Frey and his wife are no criminals — they are both veteran prosecutors in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office — but they had become victims of one of the more despicable political dirty tricks practiced in America these days. A man had called the police, made it seem like he was Frey, and said he had just shot his wife and would shoot again. The cops have no choice but to charge in expecting the worst.

Frey has written extensively, and chillingly, about what happened and the aftermath. He is a combatively activist blogger and says that others on his side who wrote about Weiner and various lefty activities have also been SWAT-ed. He's unhappy now about the lack of investigative power put into the cases by the FBI, telling the LA Weekly in a story posted today, "It's as if the whole matter is just being treated as a blogger war, as opposed to something that could have gotten multiple people killed." He has his reaction to the Weekly story here.